NGC 1365, also known as the Great Barred Spiral Galaxy and it is a major member of the Fornax cluster which consists of 58 galaxies. In this widefield some of these galaxies can be seen.



The galaxy has a straight east-west bar and two very prominent outer spiral arms that extend in a wide curve north and south from the ends of the bar and form an almost ring like Z-shaped halo. Closer to the oval-shaped center is a second spiral structure and the young luminous hot stars, born out of the interstellar clouds, give these arms a prominent appearance and a blue color.



Many huge young star clusters trace out the main spiral arms and each contains hundreds or thousands of bright young stars that are less than ten million years old. NGC 1365 is too remote for single stars to be seen in this image and most of the tiny clumps visible in the picture are really star clusters. Over the whole galaxy, stars are forming at a rate of about three times the mass of our Sun per year.



While the bar of the galaxy consists mainly of older stars, many new stars are born in stellar nurseries of gas and dust in the inner spiral close to the nucleus. The bar also funnels gas and dust gravitationally into the very center of the galaxy, where a supermassive black hole is hidden among myriads of bright new stars.



This black hole has a mass 2 million times that of our Sun and is spinning almost as fast as Einstein’s

theory of gravity will allow. Supermassive black holes are surrounded by pancake-like accretion disks, formed as their gravity pulls matter inward. The bright center of NGC 1365 is thought to be due to huge amounts of superhot gas ejected from such an accretion disk circling this central black hole.



The bar rotates clockwise with velocities in the nucleus of 2000 kilometers per second resulting in one

rotation in 350 million years.

Supernovae 1957C, 1983V, 2001du and 2012fr (discovered on 27 Oct 2012) were observed in this galaxy.

Reference: Nasa Website

Some Databook Information:

Constellation: Fornax

Right ascension: 03h 33m 36.4s

Declination: −36° 08′ 25″

Redshift: 1636 ± 1 km/s

Distance: 56.2 ± 2.6 Mly (17.2 ± 0.8 Mpc)

Type: SBb

Apparent dimensions: 11′.2 × 6′.2

Apparent magnitude: 10.3

Image Details:

Luminance: 24x1200sec bin 1x1

Blue: 24x600sec bin 2x2

Red: 20x600sec bin 2x2

Green: 12x600sec bin 2x2

Telescope: Skywatcher Esprit 120mm f/7

CCD: ST-8300M

CCD Guiding: Lodestar

Capture and guiding software: MaxIm DL

Mount: EQ-6 Pro

Processing: PixInsight

Bias, Darks and Flats applied

REV2: There was no full reprocessing, just the white balance has been imoroved taking the color of the galaxy to a more natural representation.